Policy ReseaRch WoRking PaPeR 4553
The Historical Foundations of the Narcotic Drug Control Regime
Julia Buxton
The World BankDevelopment Research GroupMacroeconomics and Growth TeamMarch 2008
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Abstract
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
Policy ReseaRch WoRking PaPeR 4553
This paper outlines the institutional history of the international narcotic drug control regime. It details the evolution of the control system, from its foundations at the beginning of the twentieth century – a period of mass, unregulated narcotic drug use – to the current period. The paper argues that the contemporary control model is ill-positioned to address the dynamic and rapidly changing nature of the global narcotics trade.
This paper—a product of the Growth and the Macroeconomics Team, Development Research Group—is part of a larger effort in the department to understand the development consequences of crime and conflict. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The author may be contacted at [email protected].
The persistence of anachronistic guiding first principles, specifically the utopian idea of prohibition, is identified as the key impediment to the adoption of a more humane and effective policy approach. But while there is growing pressure for a revision of founding ideas, this is not supported by a host of powerful actors that includes the United States.
The Historical Foundations of the Narcotic Drug Control Regime
Julia Buxton* University of Bradford
Key Words: Opium trade, commercialization, prohibition, League of Nations, United Nations, Narcotics Conventions, iatrogenic.
* Senior Research Fellow, Centre for International Cooperation and Security, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK.
Introduction
The international system of narcotic drug control is based on a complex series of
accords and conventions that are administered by a dedicated drug bureaucracy within
the United Nations and national level partner agencies. These lock individual nation
states into the universal goal of eradicating the cultivation, production, distribution
and consumption of narcotic drugs. The global drug conventions set out a
comprehensive strategy for the achievement of a ‘drug free world’ - an end to which
all nation states are obliged to work cooperatively. Underscoring the universal nature
of the system, by 2005, 180 states were party to the 1961 Single Convention on
Narcotic Drugs, 175 were party to the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances,
and 170 states had ratified the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic.
The drug control regime is a remarkable model of international collaboration
and consensus. The core principle underpinning drug control, that states should step in
and act coercively to prevent the use of dangerous substances, is accepted by all
national governments regardless of regime type, religion, ideological orientation or
level of national development. This cohesion of action and principle owes much to the
longevity of the campaign to prohibit narcotic drugs. The drug control system has
evolved over a 100-year period and during this time the prohibition model has
become institutionalized, consolidated and global.
The foundations of the international quest to eliminate the market for
intoxicating substances were laid at a meeting of global powers that was held in
Shanghai in 1909 and which was convened by the US. This was the first significant
foray by the US on the stage of global diplomacy. Through the anti-drug initiative, the
US came to define and shape the drug ‘problem’ and responses. The position
maintained by the U.S. was that the trade in dangerous drugs had to be prohibited. A
century later, this remains the end goal of the control regime.
The Shanghai conference was held against the backdrop of global, free and
mass markets for substances such as opium, cannabis and cocaine, and derivative
opiates such as morphine and heroin. U.S. steps to control and regulate the trade in
intoxicating substances was revolutionary given the pervasiveness of ‘drug’ use and
the powerful vested interests in maintaining an unfettered trade. The U.S. initiative
also went against a 2,000 year long history of drug cultivation, production, trading
and use.
2
Intoxicating Substances in Historical Context
Drug Use
People have cultivated and ingested naturally occurring intoxicating and hallucinatory
substances since the beginning of civilization. The most widely used naturally
occurring drugs were opium from the opium poppy (papaver somniferum); the
flowers, leaves and resin of the cannabis plant (cannabis sativa); and the leaves of the
coca plant (erythroxylum).
There were six main reasons for drug consumption in ancient and modern
societies (Inglis 1975). The most significant was pain relief. Ancient Indian and
Chinese manuscripts recommended the inhalation or eating of cannabis for a range of
diseases such as gout, cholera, tetanus, neuralgia and for pain relief in childbirth.
Underscoring the medicinal value of cannabis, the U.S. pharmacopoeia recommended
it for the primary treatment of more than 100 illnesses in its publications from 1850 to
1937. Owing to the presence of 46 alkaloids including the analgesics codeine and
morphine, opium was also highly valued for medical treatment, beginning with the
Persians and Greeks. After Greek traders introduced opium to South Asia, the drug
was used in medical practice in India and China, according to records dating from 400
A.D. (Booth 1999; Scott 1969).
The seventeenth century brought the commercialization of medical ‘drug’ use,
underscored by the launch of Sydenham’s Laudanum, an opium based medication in
the UK in the 1680s. Competition among apothecaries and rising demand for self-
medication among the new urban working classes in the nineteenth century spurred
the opium based patent medicine market, with products such as Gowan's Pneumonia
Cure, Godfrey’s Cordial and Dr. Moffett's Teethina sold without prescription or
regulation in grocery stores (Berridge 1981; Hodgson 2001).
After the isolation in 1803 of morphine, the analgesic compound in opium, the
German pharmaceutical firm E. Merck and Company began commercial manufacture
and morphine-based products such as Winslow’s Soothing Sirup, Children's Comfort,
Dr. Seth Arnold's Cough Killer and One Day Cough Cure were launched as a superior
form of pain relief. The popularity of morphine was in turn surpassed by
diacetylmorphine, which was sold under the brand name Heroin by the German
company Bayer. First synthesized from boiling morphine in 1874, it was ten times
stronger than morphine and marketed worldwide as a cure for bronchial problems.
Indian cultivated cannabis was also commercialized by the burgeoning
3
pharmaceutical sector with Parke Davis, Squibb, Lilly and Burroughs Welcome
engaged in its manufacture and marketing.
After the active constituent of the coca leaf was identified in 1859 and named
cocaine, this drug emerged as a popular remedy for a range of physiological and
psychological illnesses such as allergies, nasal congestion, nymphomania and
morphine dependence and it was recommended by the British Medical Journal for
anesthesia in eye surgery. Produced and marketed by Merck and the American firm
Parke, Davis, cocaine based products such as Ryno’s Hay Fever and Catarrh Remedy
and Agnew’s Powder, which contained 99 percent and 35 percent pure pharmaceutical
cocaine respectively, gained mass markets in the US and Western Europe.
A second driver of drug use was the need for physical stimulation. Coca,
cannabis and other natural plant based stimulants such as betel, khat and tobacco were
traditionally ingested by indigenous and indentured laborers. In the Andean region of
South America, Spanish colonists encouraged the chewing of coca by indigenous
workers in the silver mines, as it boosted physical endurance and depressed the
appetite. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the commercialization of coca
leaves allowed for the development of a new mass market for stimulant tonics such as
Vin Mariani, which was first marketed in Europe in 1863 (Streatfeild 2001). Coca
based stimulants also found a receptive market in the U.S., where French Wine Coca,
a mixture of wine and cocaine manufactured in Atlanta, was marketed as a ‘brain-
tonic’. It was re-launched in 1886 as Coca-Cola after the alcohol prohibition
movement objected to the wine content of the product.
A third factor accounting for the preponderance of ‘drugs’ was their cultural
and spiritual significance in religious, pagan, shamanic and cultural ceremonies across
the world. From the Dagga cults of West Africa, indigenous Indian communities in
North and South America to Hindu festivals in India, coca leaves, opium, cannabis
and hallucinogenic plants such as peyote and psilocybin, were used as religious
sacraments and venerated as gifts from nature or the gods (Schultes and Hoffman
1992).
Cannabis, coca and the opium poppy were also cultivated as a food source.
Hemp, a member of the cannabis sativa family, produces highly nutritious hemp seed
and seed oil. It was a staple of rural diets in China, South and Central Asia and the
Balkan region for centuries. Hemp was also used for rope, rigging, paper making and
textiles. The utility of hemp was first recognized by the Chinese and its cultivation
4
spread to Central Asia and Europe in the thirteenth century and, following
transplantation by the Spanish conquistadors and Pilgrims, into North and South
America in the seventeenth century (Herer 1998). This points to a fifth driver of drug
cultivation – the use of these plants in early bartering and financial systems, the
Spanish for example transformed coca leaves into one of the most highly
commercialized products in the Andes by using coca as means of payment.
Relaxation, recreation and experimentation were the final factor accounting
for the popularity of drug use. However, in both ancient and modern societies this was
the preserve of the elite. The synthetic drug revolution in the second half of the
nineteenth century did see an increase in recreational drug experimentation, but this
remained confined to bohemian groups, literary and artistic figures and secret
societies, who transformed non-medical drug use into a ‘social signifier’ of rejection
of mainstream society values (Keire 1998). The invention of the injecting syringe in
1843 did create new recreational as well as medical markets for cocaine and opiates,
the 1890s Sears Roebuck catalogue for example offering a syringe and vial of cocaine
for $1.50.
A significant exception to the model of elite recreational use was the Chinese
– and broader South East Asian market for opium. Opium consumption in China was
common among all social classes and owing to the intensity of demand – and
addiction - domestic cultivation had to be reinforced by opium imports from India,
Persia and Turkey. Recreational opium smoking was also common among Chinese
immigrants scattered across port cities such as London and San Francisco.
The Trade in Drugs
Drug cultivation and use has persisted across time, but there was a dramatic change in
patterns of cultivation, production and use during the eighteenth century when opium,
and to a lesser extent coca, became commercialized. This was catalyzed by Western
efforts to expand their commercial and colonial presence in Asia. A brief assessment
of the early opium trade puts into perspective the significance of the U.S. effort to
regulate and ultimately eliminate what was one of the most important globally traded
commodities in the international market.
Early Portuguese traders were responsible for initiating the ‘mass’ market for
opium. They first discovered opium poppy cultivation and opium production in India
after their arrival in the country in 1501. As part of early efforts to enter the Chinese
5
market, the Portuguese introduced the practice of smoking opium with tobacco
shipped from Brazil. The Dutch deepened the Asian opium market through the
commercial vehicle the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (V.O.C.), which by the
1640s had pushed Portugal out of Indonesia and gained control of the profitable trade
in spices and opium. Indicative of the rapid growth of the Dutch controlled opium
market after this date, imports of Bengal opium from India into Indonesia increased
from 0.6 metric tons (m.t.) in the 1660s to 87 m.t. by 1699. The V.O.C. realized
profits in excess of 400 percent through the re-export of Bengal opium to China and
as a result of the lucrative nature of the opium enterprise, the spice trade declined in
value and commercial significance (McCoy 1972; La Motte 2003).
The most dramatic change came with the arrival in India in 1608 of the British
East India Company (E.I.C.), which was originally created to boost Britain’s
commercial interest in the spice trade. Through military confrontation with the Indian
opium merchants, the E.I.C. gradually acquired control of the lucrative opium sector
and absorbed peasant cultivators into a loose syndicate system. Opium for export was
sold through E.I.C. auction houses in Calcutta, while domestic demand was met
through the sale of heavily taxed opium through an E.I.C. monopoly of 10,000 retail
outlets in India.
Opium as a commodity was of enormous fiscal and commercial significance
for Britain, which expanded cultivation in the Bengal area from 90,000 acres in 1830
to 176,000 in 1840, reaching a high of 500,000 acres by 1900 (McCoy 1972; Richards
2003). Revenues from opium exports, which climbed from 127 m.t. in 1800 to 6,372
m.t. by 1857 (Ul Haq 2000: 27) and domestic sales taxes contributed 11 percent of
total revenues accruing to the British administration in India. Aside from financing
the colonial enterprise in India and other British territorial possessions in South East
Asia, opium was intensely valuable to Britain because it reversed a significant balance
of trade deficit with China. While there was strong demand in the U.K. for Chinese
goods, such as tea, silk and ceramics, the Chinese market for British manufactured
exports was limited and no foreign traders were allowed to operate outside of Canton.
The export of Indian opium to China reversed this negative trade flow. The opium
trade also enabled Britain to gain a strong commercial foothold in China. As in India,
this was achieved by Britain’s use of military force. Successive Chinese emperors had
sought to restrict the use of opium, which was seen as offensive to Confucian
morality. However, prohibition decrees issued by Emperor Yung Cheng in 1729 and
6
Kia King in 1799 met with resistance from British merchant smugglers and when
these were repelled by the Chinese, the British government launched naval attacks in
their defense. Under the resulting peace agreements of the two ‘opium wars’ fought
between Britain and China in 1839 and 1857, China was forced to open the treaty
ports of Amoy, Tinghai, Chunhai and Ningpo to the British, Britain gained Hong
Kong and the Chinese were forced to legalize the opium trade.
Summary
When the U.S. convened the first opium conference at the turn of the century, opium
cultivation and consumption was at an all time high. Production levels were in the
region of 41,624 m.t. per year, the bulk of which was produced in China in Yunnan
and Szechwan provinces. The Persian and Ottoman Empires had emerged as
significant cultivator countries having stepped up opium poppy cultivation and opium
production in the second half of the nineteenth century in order to meet rising global
demand. National governments, commercial trading houses and the pharmaceutical
sector all had significant interests in the opium trade. The colonial powers, U.K.,
Spain and the Netherlands had operated opium retail monopolies across South East
Asia for over one hundred and fifty years and these contributed to the administrative
costs of the colonial enterprise. In Java, Indonesia the Dutch administered 1,065
opium retail outlets, which covered 15 percent of administration costs, while in the
British colony of Malaya (Malaysia), opium sales contributed 53 percent (McCoy
1972).
Further developing the picture of a large global market and commercial
interest in ‘narcotic’ drugs, coca cultivation had expanded out of native cultivation
areas in South America such as the Yungas in Bolivia and Huanuco, Libertad and
Cuzco in Peru. British and Dutch pharmaceutical companies and commercial interests
transplanted coca leaf cultivation to Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Indonesia
and British Guyana in order to reduce shipping times and to meet rising demand for
cocaine. The Dutch had set up cocaine manufacturing facilities in Indonesia following
the introduction of the coca leaf to Java in 1900 and by the turn of the century, the
Dutch were the world’s leading cocaine producer (Gootenberg 1999). As with opium
production, national governments in coca cultivation areas also invested heavily in
their new comparative advantage, the Peruvian government for example devised a
7
strategy for national development based on the promotion of the coca paste export
sector (Walker 1996).
Inaction and Detachment: The US and the Early Opium Question
The US was relatively marginal to the trade in opium, coca and cannabis throughout
the centuries of the drug market’s operations. It was only at the beginning of the
twentieth century, when the use of narcotic substances was at a high point, that the US
became engaged in the nascent drug ‘debate’. When it did so, the country assumed a
radical posture, pressuring for the complete elimination of the trade, a position that
‘required little sacrifice from Americans while demanding fundamental social and
institutional change from others’ (McAllister 2000: 66).
This was a belated entry, particularly given that Christian based anti-opium
campaigns in countries such as the U.K. and India had been mobilizing around the
‘trade in misery’ for over 30 years. Three factors account for U.S. detachment from
the opium question during the emerging debates of the mid-nineteenth century.
Firstly, alcohol, rather than drugs were seen as the most pressing social problem in the
U.S. The explosion of saloon bars associated with vice, gambling and drunkenness
catalyzed the emergence of a powerful Christian based prohibition lobby that focused
political attention on the need for a ban on alcohol rather than regulation of the drug
trade.
Even if the federal government were minded to intervene to regulate
intoxicating substances it was powerless to act. The constitutional separation of
powers limited the responsibility of federal government to foreign policy, inter-state
commerce and revenue raising measures such as taxation. As a result, it could not
impose legislation on states, which retained jurisdiction over policing, criminal and
civil law and the regulation of trade and transport (Whitebread 1995). This was
despite evidence of a rising problem of morphine addiction among women and civil
war veterans in the second half of the nineteenth century. An estimated 40,000 former
combatants of the Northern army suffered from ‘soldier’s sickness’ or the ‘army
disease’, a morphine dependence that followed from its routine administration on the
battlefield (Ul Haq 2000: 40; Whitebread 1995). Middle class women were the largest
constituency of American opiate addicts, which totaled an estimated 300,000 people
out of a population of 76 million. Intra-muscular morphine injection was commonly
8
prescribed for female ‘problems of mood’ that included gynecological infection,
depression and nymphomania (Courtwright 1982; Keire 1998; Walker 1996: 39).
The absence of federal government regulation contrasted with the situation in
the U.K. where the national government introduced the 1868 Pharmacy Act in
response to a rise in overdose-related deaths. The U.K. legislation did not restrict the
sale or use of drugs; it simply required that opiates and cocaine be clearly labeled as
poisons. It was highly effective in reducing drug-related morbidity, particularly in
small children. When anti-opium legislation was finally introduced in the U.S. in the
1870s and 1880s, this was on the initiative of individual states and it was specifically
targeted at Chinese nationals. It was part of a wider anti-Chinese campaign that was
led by organizations such as the American Federation of Labor and the Workingmen’s
Party and it came as part of a package of measures that included restrictions on the
rights of Chinese immigrants to marry, own property and practice certain professions.
As such, the first U.S. drug laws were premised on racial prejudice, not a
preoccupation with national health.
A final important factor accounting for the tardiness of US engagement with
the drug issue was the country’s lack of overseas territorial possessions. Unlike
Britain, Spain and the Netherlands, the U.S. had no colonial enterprise and the
country maintained only a marginal trading presence in South East Asia. As a result,
it was divorced from the broader debate on the morality of the opium trade and the
operations of the market more generally. It was alcohol rather than drugs that pre-
occupied the moral conscience of white, Christian U.S. society.
It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that a national debate on
foreign policy and the need for ‘empire building’ began to take hold in the U.S.
Preoccupation with the consolidation of national territory, unification of North and
South and prevention of foreign incursion into the Southern hemisphere inhibited
aspirations of overseas expansion. It was not until 1898 that the U.S. acquired its first
overseas possession, Hawaii, a move that followed intense pressure for expansion on
then Republican President McKinley from agricultural, media and financial interests.
US Narco-Diplomacy
The drastic change in the position of the U.S. federal government, from one of
detachment from the opium question to leadership on the issue was triggered by the
acquisition of the Philippines from Spain. This followed the Spanish defeat in the
9
Spanish American war of 1898 and the subsequent ceding of the Philippines, Guam,
Cuba and Puerto Rico to the U.S. under the Treaty of Paris. Under ongoing pressure
for U.S. territorial aggrandizement, the McKinley government assumed direct
responsibility for the Philippines. On the basis that the Philippines had been entrusted
to the U.S. ‘by the providence of God’, the U.S. set about ‘civilizing’ its people, while
granting independence to Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Having acquired direct responsibility over the Philippines, the US federal
government was forced to address the opium question. A decision had to be made on
the retention of the opium retail outlets that had been established by the Spanish, 190
of which operated in Manila alone. The immediate response of the Governor General
William Howard Taft was to allow opium sales to continue, with the finances raised
ring-fenced for education spending. This provoked a vigorous and immediate
response from Christian missionaries in the Philippines that included the Protestant
Episcopal Bishop of Manila, Charles H. Brent and Reverend Wilbur Crafts, the
president of the International Reform Bureau (I.R.B.), the main American missionary
organization. Brent and Crafts intensively – and successfully - lobbied the federal
government for a commission of enquiry on opium use in the Philippines.
The resulting Philippines Opium Commission of 1903 was the first federal
government enquiry into the use and effects of intoxicating substances. It was headed
by Bishop Brent and its findings contradicted those of the earlier British Royal Opium
Commission, which had been convened in 1895. While the British Commission had
found opium-related problems in India ‘comparatively rare and novel’, thereby
legitimizing continued British participation in the trade, the Philippines Commission
found that the unregulated sale of opium had grave effects on the health and moral
capacity of users. It recommended that the import, sale and use of opium should be
based on medical need only, thereby ending a centuries long tradition of unregulated
and promiscuous use in South East Asia (McAllister 2000). The recommendations of
the Philippines Opium Commission were accepted by the U.S. Federal government,
which put in place a three-year transition timetable phasing out the use of opium
among the 12,000 registered consumers in the Philippines.
The influence of the Christian Missionaries did not end with this measure.
Brent and Crafts lobbied the Roosevelt administration to convene an international
opium conference. This was a significant step and it marked the beginnings of US
‘narco-diplomacy’. Brent and Crafts argued that without an international agreement to
10
curb the supply of opium, the domestic regulations put in place in the Philippines
would fail. Two important principles had therefore been set out by the influential
missionary groups. Firstly, that the use of intoxicating substances was morally wrong
and injurious and that national governments had the responsibility to step in to
prevent people from doing harm to themselves. Secondly, that this could only be
achieved by reducing the supply of narcotic substances from cultivator and producer
countries. This prohibitionist, supply-side focused thrust shaped the structure and
orientation of the international control regime that was to emerge.
The Shanghai Opium Conference
All of the great powers, with the exception of the Ottoman Empire, accepted the US
invitation to participate in an international opium conference, on the understanding
that participants did not have plenipotentiary powers and consequently national
governments would not be bound by a final resolution.
The emphasis on prohibition that informed the views of the U.S. delegation to
the meeting was a minority position. The British, Dutch and other significant
stakeholder countries were prepared to concede the need for regulation of the opium
trade, but they emphasized regulation over prohibition. The British had already
moved toward a ten year supply-reduction agreement with China, were an estimated
one in four males where addicted to the drug. This 1907 Anglo-Chinese accord
proved highly successful in reducing opium cultivation and availability. There was
also a strong view that banning opium would be futile – particularly given the scale of
the sector - and counterproductive. In previous experiences, the prohibition of
substances ranging from coffee to wine and tobacco, black-markets had flourished
while illicit supply and demand had persisted. Moreover, the U.S. delegation’s
emphasis on enforcement of prohibition through punishment of ‘offenders’, as
proposed by the U.S. Opium Commissioner and head of the U.S. delegation Dr
Hamilton Wright, was viewed as punitive and extreme. These divisions between the
U.S. and other participant countries: ‘remained central points of contention for
decades’ (McAllister 2000: 29).
Although no concrete agreement came out of Shanghai, the meeting was of
enormous significance. It laid the foundations for international dialogue on opium and
other drugs. This was fully capitalized on by the U.S. missionary groups that had
placed themselves at the helm of the anti-opium campaign. They successfully lobbied
11
for a follow-up international conference which was held in The Hague in 1911. U.S.
narco-diplomacy also forced the introduction of domestic anti-drug legislation in the
U.S. It was recognized that the U.S. would have no credibility on the international
stage if domestic restrictions were not in place but a circuitous route had to be devised
in order that that the federal administration could bypass constitutional obstacles to
national regulation. In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act was introduced as an
exercise in the right of federal government to regulate interstate commerce. As with
the earlier British Pharmacy Act, this did not prohibit drug use, it simply required that
alcohol, morphine, opium, cocaine, heroin, chloroform and cannabis contents were
labeled on medicines and tonics.
Although the new law was successful in reducing the use of patent medicines
(Courtwright 1982), it did not meet the Christian lobby position that all non-medicinal
drug use should be banned as consumption was immoral, degrading and dangerous.
This principle was not realized in legislative form until 1909, when the Federal
government introduced the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act in line with its
constitutional right to regulate overseas trade. This prohibited the import of opium for
non-medicinal purposes, making the 1909 law the first federal measure banning the
non-medical, ‘recreational’ use of a substance.
The Exclusion Act was a triumph for the Christian Missionary lobby, but the
strategy for achieving support for the Act’s introduction was divisive. There was a
strong reliance on the use of racist language and imagery to galvanize popular and
political support for strict anti-drug measures and this was to become a core feature of
anti-drug measures in the U.S. In his role as the first U.S. drug ‘tsar’ Hamilton Wright
worked with William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper empire to generate concern
around substance use among minority groups. In an interview with the New York
Times in March 1911, Wright focused public and media attention on the dangers
posed to white American society by cocaine use among African Americans. This was
further developed in the Literary Digest and Good Housekeeping, were Wright
elaborated on the danger posed to white women by ‘negro cocaine peddlers’ and
‘cocainized nigger rapists’. These ‘Negro fiends’ with cocaine induced superhuman
strengths easily substituted for the opium wielding Chinese ‘devils’ of the earlier anti-
opium propaganda. Public pressure for action was in turn channeled toward domestic
legislation in the U.S., while strengthening the hawkish, prohibition oriented position
of the U.S. delegation to The Hague conference of 1911.
12
Building the Early Control Regime
The 1912 International Opium Convention
Between The Hague meeting of 1911 and the outbreak of the Second World War,
substantial progress was made in creating the founding structures of the international
control regime. In contrast to the Shanghai meeting, delegates to The Hague did have
plenipotentiary powers and as a result, participating countries were bound by the
resulting International Opium Convention. This ‘raised the obligation to co-operate in
the international campaign against the drug evil from a purely moral one to the level
of a duty under international law’ (May 1950).
The Convention institutionalized the principle that medical need was the sole
criterion for the manufacture, trade and use of opiates and cocaine. National
governments were thereby required to enact ‘effective laws or regulations’ to control
production and distribution and to restrict the ports through which cocaine and opiates
were exported. While the Convention was a groundbreaking document, it did not
create mechanisms to oversee implementation of the agreement, nor did it set targets
for reducing the volume of drugs manufactured. It was also loosely worded and, most
problematic of all, could only come into effect if unanimously approved. Amid
mounting suspicion and enmity between governments in the drift to war in 1914,
consensus was difficult to achieve and only China, The Netherlands, the U.S.,
Honduras and Norway ratified the Convention (Bewley Taylor 2001; McAllister
2000).
The First World War removed the obstacles to ratification and administration
of the Opium Convention. Firstly, Austria Hungary and the Ottoman Empire -
reluctant supporters of the measure - were defeated in the conflict and this made it
possible to craft a new consensus and for the U.S. and West European powers to
impose the Convention. This was done by conjoining ratification of the Convention to
the Versailles Peace Agreement of 1919 (McAllister 2000). Secondly, the League of
Nations was created in the aftermath of the First ‘Great War’ and this provided the
international community with a centralized body for the administration of the
Convention.
On assuming responsibility for overseeing the Opium Convention, the League
created specialized support bodies that included the Opium Section, which provided
administrative and executive support to the League Council, and the Health
13
Committee of the League, forerunner of the World Health Organization, which
advised the League’s Secretariat on drug related matters. The most important and
specialized of these bodies within the new control regime was the Advisory
Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, known as the Opium
Advisory Committee (O.A.C.), which in turn created the Opium Control Board to
assist it in its duties.
From this institutional foundation, the League went on to incrementally
develop a comprehensive control regime. Knowledge and operational gaps in the
system were identified and addressed through follow up conferences and the
introduction of new conventions. This process of building up the control system
proceeded with two conferences in Geneva in 1924 that sought to address the
problems encountered by the O.A.C. in developing a comprehensive picture of the
‘legitimate’ medical drug market.
The Geneva Convention
The Geneva Convention of 1928 expanded the manufacturing control system by
establishing compulsory drug import certificates and export authorizations that were
to be administered by national authorities and which were required for all drug
transactions between countries. This sought to prevent countries importing or
exporting drugs beyond medical and scientific requirement. In order to determine the
level of legitimate medical drug requirements, parties to the Convention were to
provide annual statistics estimating production, manufacture and consumption
requirements for opiates, coca, cocaine and, for the first time in drug control,
cannabis. This information was to be supplemented by quarterly statistics detailing the
volume of plant based and manufactured drugs imported and exported and estimated
figures for opium smoking. A new drug control organ, the eight-person Permanent
Central Opium Board (P.C.O.B.), which replaced the Opium Control Board, assumed
responsibility for processing the statistical information. The P.C.O.B. had the
authority to request explanations from national governments if they failed to submit
statistical information or if stated drug import or export requirements were overshot.
The Board could also recommend an embargo of drug exports or imports on any
country that exported or imported in excess of stated production levels or medical
need. This extended to countries that were not party to the Convention, universalizing
the control system. Aside from refining the institutional structure and remit of drug
14
control, the 1928 Convention increased the number of drugs subject to the control
regime and created an open-ended schedule that classified drugs according to their
danger to health and relevance to science.
The 1924 Geneva conference also resulted in a second convention, The
Agreement Concerning the Manufacture of, Internal Trade in, and Use of Prepared
Opium, which came into force in 1926. This established a 15-year timetable for the
elimination of recreational opium use in Southeast Asia.
Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic
Drugs
The Geneva Convention failed to prevent legitimately manufactured drugs seeping
into the illegitimate market. The O.A.C. determined that between 1925 and 1929,
legitimate demand for opium and cocaine based drugs was in the region of 39 tons per
year, while one hundred tons of opiates had been exported to unknown destinations
from licensed factories (Anslinger and Tompkins 1953). A follow up conference,
addressing this weakness resulted in the 1931 Convention for Limiting the
Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs. The Convention set
out that the quantity of manufactured drugs required globally was to be fixed in
advance. This was to be determined by a compulsory estimates system, under which
all countries were required to detail the quantities of drugs required for medical and
scientific purposes for the coming year. The system of indirect limitations was
administered by a new body, the four-person Drug Supervisory Board (D.S.B.), which
was authorized to draw up its own estimates of individual country needs as a means of
checking the information submitted and it devised estimates for those countries that
did not submit their drug requirements. No greater quantity of any of the drugs set out
in the D.S.B. final report was to be manufactured.
In a further tightening of the control regime, the P.C.O.B. was empowered
under the 1931 Convention to directly embargo any country that exported or imported
beyond its stated manufacturing volumes or consumption needs. Signatory states were
also required to establish a dedicated national drug enforcement agency to ensure
compliance with domestic drug laws that had been introduced at the local level in line
with international obligations.
Convention for the Suppression of the Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs,
15
The final element of the inter-war control regime was the 1936 Convention for the
Suppression of the Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs, an initiative of the International
Police Commission, the forerunner of Interpol. Unlike previous conventions, which
sought to demarcate a legitimate trade in medical drugs, the 1936 Convention
addressed the illegal market. It imposed punitive and uniform criminal penalties for
trafficking illicit substances, with Article 2 of the Convention recommending that
national anti-trafficking laws should be based on ‘imprisonment, or other penalties of
deprivation of liberty’. National governments were obliged to set up a dedicated
agency responsible for monitoring drug traffickers and trafficking trends, in co-
ordination with corresponding agencies in other countries.
Table 1: Pre-World War Two Drug Conventions
Date, Place Signed
Title of Convention Into Force
January 1912, The Hague
International Opium Convention Feb. 1915 and June 1919
Feb. 1925, Geneva Agreement concerning the Manufacture of, Internal Trade in, and Use of Prepared Opium
July 1926
Feb. 1925, Geneva International Opium Convention Sept. 1928 July 1931, Geneva Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and
Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs July 1933
Nov. 1931 Bangkok
Agreement for the Control of Opium Smoking in the Far East
April 1937
June 1936, Geneva
Convention for the Suppression of the Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs
Oct. 1939
Evaluating the Inter-War Control Regime
The international community made remarkable progress in working collectively (an
unprecedented development in itself) to control the supply of harmful substances. In
1933, the O.A.C. reported that: ‘the sources of supply [of drugs] in Western Europe,
as a result of the close control now exercised, appear to be rapidly drying up’
(Renborg 1964). World opium production declined 82 percent between 1907 and
1934, from 41,624 tons to an estimated 16,653 tons. Legitimate Heroin production fell
from 20,000 pounds in 1926 to 2,200 pounds by 1931. South East Asia, the biggest
‘problem’ market saw a 65 percent fall in opium sales and in the Netherlands Indies
(Indonesia), there was an 88 percent fall in opium consumption (McCoy 1972). This
was a major achievement given the difficulties inherent in negotiating a universal
16
agreement that had to reconcile diverse and competing interests, ensure an adequate
global supply of medical drugs while altering patterns of individual behavior. The
control model was all the more remarkable as it was a first step in the direction of
states surrendering overview of their sovereign affairs to an international body. Drug
control was also groundbreaking as it led to the introduction of uniform penal
sanctions across countries and established principles of criminal law on an
international basis.
The instauration of a comprehensive substance control regime was a major
success for the U.S. Christian lobby groups that had first initiated the drug control
discourse at the turn of the twentieth century. The U.S. was able to pull dissenting
national voices into the system and override competing regulatory proposals as a
result of two key factors: evolving attitudes toward the drug trade in Europe and
astute U.S. diplomacy.
As understanding of addiction and dependence evolved, West European states
acknowledged the need for a stronger control framework, a paternalist orientation that
was reinforced by the creation of rudimentary welfare state systems that afforded
government responsibility for the heath of citizens. The roll out of European welfare
state additionally eliminated the need for self-medication, further legitimizing medical
and political arguments in favor of controlled drug use (Berridge 2001).
This is not to suggest that European and other governments were in full accord
with the prohibition orientation of the U.S., which was the driving force behind the
introduction of increasingly punitive sanctions in the Conventions. The Dutch,
British, French and Spanish all remained skeptical of the U.S. view that recreational
drug use could be terminated through ‘shock’ strategies and they remained convinced
of the importance of medical support for drug users over the penal approach
advocated by the U.S. Moreover they did not accept that cultivation of opium or coca
could be rapidly eradicated and on this issue they did achieve a significant victory
over the U.S. by introducing a protracted 15 year timeframe for cultivation controls.
As a result, by 1939, state opium monopolies continued to operate in Burma, British
Malaya, Netherlands Indies, Siam, French Indo-China, Hong Kong, Macao, Formosa
and Kwantung Leased Territory. Overall however, the U.S. delegation was effective
in defining the shape and orientation of the control system – largely because of
political posturing and by acting on the outside of the League of Nations.
17
European countries were determined to bring the U.S. into the League, which
it finally did in 1924. It was primarily through concern that the U.S. would withdraw
from the body that European powers acceded influence to the U.S. on drug related
matters. U.S. representatives at the drug conferences and within the control bodies,
such as Harry J. Anslinger, director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Herbert
May of the P.C.O.B. were forceful individuals and: ‘their beliefs, morals, ambitions
and single-minded determination enabled them to exert exceptional influence over the
shape of the international drug control regime’ (Sinha 2001). When the American
position was rejected, the U.S. withdrew from proceedings. Ironically the U.S. was
not party to the most important founding conventions including the 1928 Geneva
Convention and the 1936 trafficking convention, on the grounds that they were not
rigorous enough (Bewley Taylor 2001; McAllister 2000; Sinha 2001). The U.S. also
signed bilateral policing agreements with 22 countries during the inter-war period.
While this went against the spirit of cooperation that the League was seeking to
create, it allowed the U.S. to extradite and prosecute drug traffickers independent of
the international control system (Anslinger and Tompkins 1953).
Consequently the drug control framework that evolved reflected the core
values of the U.S. and the internationalization of prohibition oriented ideas and
approaches that were culturally unique to the U.S. Owing to the influence of the U.S.
the control model that emerged was skewed toward supply, as opposed to demand
focused activities, it emphasized punishment and suppression over consideration of
why people cultivated, produced and used drugs and it institutionalized the influence
of the police, the military, politicians and diplomats while the opinion of stakeholders
such as doctors, drug users and peasant cultivators were marginalized (Sinha 2001).
Underscoring a further ‘internationalization’ of American approaches to drugs,
there was a growing reliance on the demonization of drug users in order to justify
repressive domestic legislative measures such as the 1919 Dutch Opium Act, the 1929
German Opium Act and the 1920 British Dangerous Drugs Act. The emphasis on
embattled nations under attack from subversive forces seeking to enslave, poison and
infiltrate the country, of dangerous substances, threatening ‘out groups’ and
criminality, all of which was prevalent in early U.S. anti-drug propaganda, became a
stock element of international counter-narcotics propaganda and ‘education’. These
stereotypes of drug users remain prevalent today (Reinarman and Levine 1997).
18
In the U.S., themes of race, crime and drugs were even more potent as the
federal government labored around the constitutional separation of powers to
introduce strict, national prohibition measures. The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of
1914 and the Marijuana Taxation Act of 1937 were introduced as taxation based
measures, in line with the jurisdiction of the federal government. They imposed
punitively high taxes on the non-medical exchange of cocaine and opiates, in the case
of the former and cannabis transactions, including the sale of industrial hemp, in the
case of the 1937 measure. Under the Harrison Act doctors had to register with federal
authorities, record all drug transactions and pay a prescription tax. Any individual
caught in possession of cocaine or opiates without a prescription was consequently
charged with tax evasion rather than a criminal offence (Whitebread 1995). After
1922, doctors were not allowed to prescribe ‘narcotic drugs’ to addicts to maintain
their addiction (Berridge 2001; Courtwright 1982; Whitebread 1995). The Federal
Bureau of Narcotics, which was created in 1930 and presided over by Harry J.
Anslinger for thirty years, assumed a lead role in disseminating anti-drug propaganda
and acculturalizing Americans to the new drug laws. Among the reams of shockingly
racist articles from the period was a New York Times piece by Edward Huntington
Williams. This claimed that cocaine made African-Americans resistant to bullets.
(New York Times, February 8 1914). In the Congressional hearings into the 1914
Harrison bill, the head of the State Pharmacy Board of Pennsylvania, Christopher
Koch testified that: ‘Most of the attacks upon the white women of the south are the
direct result of the cocaine-crazed Negro brain’ (New York Times, Feb. 8, 1914). In
the build up to the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, Mexican migrants emerged as the new
drug threat. It was claimed that ‘marijuana crazed Mexicans’ were committing violent
acts after smoking the ‘loco weed’. By emphasizing the threat faced by American
society, the F.B.N. was positioned to substantially increase its share of federal
revenues.
After the alcohol prohibition movement was successful in amending the
Constitution and achieving national prohibition in 1918, key activists such as
Richmond Pearson Hobson of the Anti-Saloon League shifted their attention to the
anti-drug campaign. Pearson formed the International Narcotic Education Association
in the early 1920s and this organization was responsible for distributing racist,
eugenicist, hyperbolic and medically incorrect ‘information’ about the ‘Narcotic
Peril’. Support and pressure for drug prohibition persisted even after alcohol
19
prohibition was lifted in 1933. This was despite the fact that alcohol prohibition had
been a failure and that there were important lessons – that were not learned - from the
experience. Even though alcohol prohibition had generated a flourishing, difficult to
police, gangster dominated illicit industry worth millions of dollars, pressure for
domestic and international drug prohibition persisted and was institutionalized in the
contemporary drug control framework that evolved after World War Two.
The Contemporary Drug Control Regime
While the First World War provided a strategic opportunity to advance the principle
of drug control, World War Two enabled the U.S. to consolidate control of the drug
control regime and apparatus. The framework that developed after 1945 addressed the
priorities of the U.S. specifically: the prohibition of opium smoking; restrictions on
drug plant cultivation; extension of the control system to cannabis and other drugs;
enhanced policing and enforcement and the application of punitive criminal sentences
for those engaged in illicit plant cultivation, drug production, trafficking,
transportation, distribution, possession and use (Bruun, Pan and Rexed 1975). The
capacity of the U.S. to consolidate its influence can be attributed to a number of
factors that included the geo-strategic changes induced by the conflict and the
exercise of U.S. political pressure and leverage.
The work of the Permanent Central Opium Board and the Drug Supervisory
Board was transferred from Geneva to Washington in 1941. Reliant on federal
funding, both bodies experienced a ‘considerable loss of freedom’ (McAllister 2000:
146) as they were required to submit technical information to the U.S. government
and assist in the development of new anti-drug policies. The War also provided the
U.S. with a strategic foothold in South East Asia. At a 1943 meeting with
representatives from Britain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands the U.S. won the
guarantee that opium monopolies would not be re-established in colonial territories
invaded by Japan that were liberated with the help of, or by the U.S. The subsequent
offensive U.S. military presence in the region enabled America to impose its model of
prohibition. Opium dens and retail outlets were closed down by U.S. troops and on
conclusion of the war, strict anti-drug legislation was introduced by the American
administration in West Germany and Japan. The diplomatic environment also allowed
for negotiations with opium cultivating neutral governments such as Iran, Turkey and
20
the Yugoslavian governments in exile and this allowed for preliminary agreements on
cultivation controls.
In the aftermath of the War, the Lake Success protocol of 1946 transferred
administration of the drug conventions from the defunct League of Nations to the
newly established United Nations. The U.N. Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC) acquired primary responsibility for overseeing the conventions, and it was
supported in this task by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (C.N.D.), which advised
ECOSOC on drug-related matters and prepared draft international agreements. As
such, the C.N.D. supplanted the Opium Advisory Committee. In a further innovation
to existing control institutions, administrative support that had been provided by the
Opium Section was transferred to a new body, the Division of Narcotic Drugs
(D.N.D.) The P.C.O.B. and D.S.B. were transferred back to Geneva from
Washington, were they continued in their role compiling statistics from national
estimates and administering the import / export certification system.
Another new institution, the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) assumed
the drug advisory responsibilities formerly exercised by the Health Committee of the
League of Nations. The Drug Dependence Expert Committee of the W.H.O. was in
turn given the task of determining the addictive potential of drugs and their position
on the international schedule of controls (Fazey 2003).
The Paris Protocol
While there had been a collapse in illicit drug trafficking during the war, the
international community had to address complex legacies of the conflict, such as
stockpiles of medical opium and semi-synthetic drugs and a burgeoning problem of
the dependence on new synthetic drugs such as methadone and pethidine, which had
been developed during the war but fell outside of the control schedule established by
the 1931 Convention. The first post war drugs conference resulted in the 1948 Paris
Protocol. This brought any drug liable to cause harm into the schedule of controlled
drugs and required states to inform the U.N. secretary-general of any new drug
developed that had the potential to produce harmful effects. The progress of the new
Convention was not without contention, with the Soviet Union reluctant to
acknowledge the authority of the U.N. bodies on the issue, or the existence of a drug
problem within its territory. Similarly efforts to restrict opium cultivation proposed by
21
the U.S. ran into difficulties amid concerns from consumer states that there would be
insufficient stocks of medical opium.
The resulting 1953 Opium Protocol was a compromise measure. It extended
the import and export control system for manufactured drugs to opium poppy
cultivation and cultivating countries were required to detail the amount of opium
poppy planted and harvested and volumes of opium exported, used domestically and
stockpiled. While this marked a significant step forward for the U.S., the reporting
requirements were not extended to coca after Andean countries maintained that coca
cultivation was integral to indigenous life and culture. However, by the time the
Opium Protocol came into force in 1963, it was a redundant instrument as a result of
the 1961 Single Convention.
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs
The 1961 Convention followed from a meeting of 73 countries to explore a single,
anti-drug convention that would consolidate the nine drug conventions introduced
since The Hague conference of 1911. The resulting Single Convention consolidated
past convention provisions; it introduced controls in new areas; it revised the existing
control apparatus and it was a major success for the U.S. in terms of advancing the
country’s drug control agenda.
The Single Convention extended the system of licensing, reporting and
certifying drug transactions to all raw ‘narcotic’ plant materials including cannabis
and coca leaves. Cultivator countries were required to establish national monopolies
to centralize and then phase out cultivation, production and consumption, over a 25-
year period in the case of coca and 15 years in the case of opium poppies, culminating
in a full international prohibition of the non-medical cultivation and use of these
substances by 1989. The Convention further required immediate domestic legislation
to prohibit the non-medicinal use of opium, cocaine and cannabis (which the U.S.
maintained was a ‘gateway drug’), and in a further tightening of restrictions on
medicinal consumption, a new classification schedule was introduced. Drugs
considered addictive and ‘obsolete’ in terms of their scientific and medical value,
such as opium poppy, coca and cannabis and their derivatives were classified as
schedule I or IV. Drugs that were considered less dangerous and of some medical
value were classified as Schedule II or III were (Bewley Taylor 2001; Fazey 2003;
Sinha 2001). According to Article One of the Convention, drugs presented: ‘a serious
22
evil for the individual […] fraught with social and economic danger to mankind’. As
such, signatory states were required to introduce more punitive domestic criminal
laws that punished individuals for engagement in all aspects of the illicit drug trade.
Intended as a ‘final’ and definitive document, the 1961 Convention also
restructured the international drug control apparatus. The P.C.O.B. and the D.S.B.
were merged to create a thirteen-person body of independent experts, the International
Narcotics Control Board (I.N.C.B.), which evaluated national statistical information,
monitored the import-export control system and authorized narcotic plant cultivation
for medical and scientific need. These powers were subsequently extended under a
1972 amendment, which gave the I.N.C.B. responsibility for developing and
implementing programs to prevent the cultivation, production, manufacture,
trafficking and use of illicit drugs and for advising countries that needed assistance in
complying with the Conventions. The amendment also addressed extradition and
required that any bilateral agreement automatically include drug-related offences.
While the thrust of the 1961 Convention was toward a tightening of criminal
sanctions, the 1972 amendment did introduce an important shift toward addressing
demand-side issues. Parties to the 1961 Convention were now requested to provide
‘treatment, education, after-care, rehabilitation and social reintegration’ for drug
addicts and users.
1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances
Although the Single Convention was intended as ‘a convention to end all
conventions’ (May 1950) the international community met in 1971 in order to
respond to the advances in chemistry and synthetic drug manufacture which had led to
new mass markets for psychotropic substances such as amphetamines, barbiturates
and hallucinogens that were not incorporated into the existing regulatory framework.
The resulting Psychotropic Convention introduced a regulatory regime for these drugs
modeled on the manufacturing and cultivation control system set out in the 1961
Convention. This included a schedule of four levels of control that were based, like
the Single Convention, on a drug’s therapeutic value and abuse potential.
The 1961 and 1971 Conventions were followed through at the domestic level
by repressive domestic drug policies. There was a significant enhancement of police
powers to stop, search, raid, hold without charge and electronically tap suspected
traffickers, dealers and drug users, while the death sentence or mandatory life
23
sentence for offences related to trafficking, production and possession, were routinely
introduced. For critics of the approach, the uniformity of strategies owed much to the
pressure on regimes stemming from ‘youth rebellion’, protest movements,
revolutionary ideologies, social experimentation and profound East-West tensions. In
this interpretation, repressive, penal oriented measures made it possible to suppress
political dissent (Gamella and Jiménez Rodrigo 2004).
The domestic response in the U.S. was particularly noteworthy as it marked a
deepening of U.S. unilateralism in drug’s strategy and a broader incorporation of
counter-narcotics policy into foreign policy. The Nixon administration launched a
‘war on drugs’ in 1969 that was followed by the introduction of the 1970 Controlled
Substances Act (C.S.A.). The C.S.A., which is the basis for contemporary U.S. drug
policy, brought together all previous federal drug legislation. It established a series of
schedules, with cannabis among a number of drugs classified as the most dangerous
drugs, or Schedule One narcotics, and it was enforced by a new agency, the Drug
Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.), which was created in 1973 following from the
closure of the F.B.N.
The ‘war on drugs’ was re-launched by President Reagan, who in a 1982
speech outlined a new aggressive posture: ‘We’re taking down the surrender flag …
we’re running up the battle flag’ (New York Times, 24 June 1982). The Reagan
administration marked the introduction of a plethora of punitive anti-drug measures
that included the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act; the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse
Act; the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Amendment Act and the 1988 Drug Free Workplace
Act. These measures raised federal penalties for all drug-related offences, introduced
mandatory minimum sentences, asset seizure without conviction and they established
the federal death penalty for drug ‘kingpins’ (Chase Eldridge 1998). The Reagan
period also saw the introduction of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE)
anti-drug program in schools and in 1986 drug testing of federal employees and
contractors under Executive Order 12564. This was coordinated by a new agency, the
Office of National Drug Control Policy which was created by the 1988 National
Narcotics Leadership Act.
This domestic legislative momentum continued into the 1990s and 2000s with
the model 1999 Drug Dealer Liability Act that imposed civil liability on drug dealers
for the direct or indirect harm caused by the use of the drugs that they distributed. In
2000 the Protecting Our Children from Drugs Act imposed mandatory minimum
24
sentences on drug dealers who involved children under the age of 18 in the trade or
who distributed near schools (Chase Eldridge 1998).
Of crucial significance, the U.S. ‘drug war’ was also characterized by the
stepping up of ‘source-focused’ policies of cultivation eradication, with a specific
focus on South America. In the mid-1980s, the Federal government introduced the
drug certification system which terminated bilateral assistance to any country deemed
by the State Department not to be co-operating in the drug war. There was also an
intense militarization of eradication and interdiction strategies, with the U.S. pressing
for and financing the deployment of source country military institutions in
enforcement activities. This escalation of unilateral U.S. counter-narcotics activities
led to a sharp increase in the federal government’s drug budget expenditures, from
$1.8bn in 1981 to $12.5 billion by 1993. The D.E.A.’s share of these revenues
increased from $200 million to $400 million (Gray 2000), with additional finances
available through the 1984 civil forfeiture law, which allowed enforcement agencies
to confiscate drug-related assets. By the end of the 1980s, the 1984 law contributed in
the region of $500 million to the Drug Enforcement Agency, while the Justice
Department received an estimated $1.5 billion in illegal assets between 1985 and
1991 (Blumenson and Nilsen 1998).
1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic
Substances
The final convention of the current drug control system was negotiated in 1988. As
with the pre-war drug control system, this related to the traffic in illicit substances and
it addressed mechanism to strengthen compliance with the control regime. The
Convention required states to co-operate and co-ordinate anti-trafficking initiatives
with international enforcement bodies and partner agencies in other countries and, in
response to the new challenges posed by the globalization of trade and services, it
called on states to introduce domestic criminal legislation to prevent money
laundering and to allow for asset seizure and extradition. The Convention also
introduced controls of chemical precursors required for the production of synthetic
and semi-synthetic drugs, with states obliged to monitor the manufacture and trade in
chemicals that could be used in illicit drug production. It additionally set out
procedures for the harmonization of national drug laws, setting out specific offences
that individual states were required to legislate against.
25
Table 2. The Post-War Drug Conventions
Date and Place Signed
Title of Agreement Date of Entry into Force
Dec. 1946, Lake Success, New York, USA
Protocol amending the Agreements, Conventions and Protocols on Narcotic Drugs concluded at The Hague on 23 January 1912, at Geneva on 11 February 1925 and 19 February 1925 and 13 July 1931, at Bangkok on 27 November 1931, and at Geneva on 26 June 1936.
Dec. 1946
Nov. 1948, Paris, France
Protocol Bringing under International Control Drugs outside the Scope of the Convention of 13 July 1931 for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs, as amended by the Protocol signed at Lake Success, New York, on 11 December 1946.
Dec. 1949
June 1953
New York, USA
Protocol for Limiting and Regulating the Cultivation of the Poppy Plant, the Production of, International and Wholesale Trade in, and Use of, Opium.
March 1963
March 1961
New York, USA
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
Dec. 1964
Feb. 1971
Vienna, Austria
Convention on Psychotropic Substances.
August 1976
March 1972
Geneva, Switzerland
Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
August 1975
Dec. 1988
Vienna, Austria
Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances
Nov. 1990
26
While no new conventions were introduced after 1988, the institutional apparatus of
the drug control regime continued to evolve. In 1991, the separate, geographically
dispersed U.N. agencies responsible for administering the conventions were unified
under the United Nations Drug Control Program (U.N.D.C.P.). This new body, which
derived its authority from the C.N.D., absorbed the D.N.D. and the I.N.C.B. As part
of this restructuring process, membership of the C.N.D. was expanded from 40
countries to 53, with seats allocated on the basis of the geographical groupings within
the U.N. (Fazey 2003).
In response to the growing inter-linkages between illicit trafficking activities,
such as small arms, narcotics and humans, there was a further streamlining of
agencies in 1997. The U.N.D.C.P. was merged with the Centre for International
Crime Prevention to form the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime
Prevention (U.N.O.D.C.C.P.) and in 2002 this agency became the U.N. Office on
Drugs and Crime (U.N.O.D.C.).
Table 3 The International Drug Control Apparatus
Body Function
Economic and Social Council Discusses and analyses drug-related issues; Initiates drug-related studies; Drafts Conventions; Convenes drug conferences.
Commission on Narcotic Drugs Analyses drug traffic and trends; Advises ECOSOC; Prepares draft international drug agreements; Provides forum for information exchange.
Body Function
International Narcotics Control Board Control organ for the implementation of the drug control treaties; Provides advice to the W.H.O.; Determines worldwide medical and scientific drug requirements; Processes technical and statistical information provided by states; Allocates cultivation, production, manufacture, export, import and trade quotas; Advises status on anti-drug measures.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Co-ordinates U.N. anti-drug activities; Provides secretariat services for the C.N.D. and I.N.C.B.; Advises countries on implementation of the drug conventions; Executes anti-drug initiatives in host countries.
27
Conclusion
Although the drug control regime has reached a high point in terms of its
universalism, comprehensiveness and institutional integrity, it is also under
unprecedented pressure and there are indications that the consensus underpinning the
model is fracturing. The cultivation, production and consumption of illicit substances
is at an all time high and drug markets have become more complex, dynamic and
diversified. This situation has forced a questioning of first principles. There is a
growing acknowledgement that the historically entrenched ideology of prohibition
that underpins the control regime is anachronistic, counterproductive and
unachievable. European and South American countries have taken the lead in
experimenting with regulatory and liberalization oriented strategies, a move that has
been informed by the failure of the highly repressive approaches that were pursued in
the 1970s and 1980s (Dolin 2001; E.M.C.D.D.A. 2001; Gatto 1999; Fazey 2003).
This focus on demand-side issues has run parallel with a revision of strategy in
‘supply’ countries. The Europeans in particular now place emphasis on ‘alternative
development’ policy in cultivator states, a position that acknowledges the persistence
of incentives to produce narcotics for the global market.
There is a wider concern that the emphasis on repression, militarization and
enforcement is iatrogenic. The persistence of prohibition thinking and prohibition
oriented policies in an age of chemical advances, globalization, HIV-AIDS and
enhanced personal freedom may be doing more harm than good. However, the
capacity of the current control regime to evolve from a source-focused,
criminalization approach toward a more liberal, treatment-oriented and
developmentalist strategy is constrained by the persistence of prohibition attitudes
among powerful country and regional players, such as China, the U.S., Russia and
Saudi Arabia. The mechanisms for debate within the drug control system are
rudimentary and the institutional capacity for flexibility, innovation and radical
reform is open to question.
The conceptual frameworks that are used to understand and respond to drugs
and drug consumption are over a century old. They were framed in a period of
colonial enterprise, social tension, racism and a lack of medical and scientific
understanding (Sinha 2001). That they continue to inform drug policy today is deeply
problematic. Meaningful change can only come from a revision of founding ideas and
while some countries have expressed support for such a review, this revolutionary
28
step is not endorsed by a host of actors owing to narrow vested financial, political and
national interests.
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